I Absolutely Love That Hobbits Have Such A Low Threshold For Weirdness Or "not Like Folks Round Here"

Surviving under late stage capitalism is hard, especially when you’re out of spoons and you’re lucky if you have a plastic knife. We’re here to help. 

The Sad Bastard Cookbook: Food You Can Make So You Don’t Die is a community-built, vegetarian/vegan guide to getting food in your facehole when you’re suffering from depression. Or other mental illnesses or physical illnesses or *waves hand generally at the state of the world* anything else. 

We’ve made it free on our website because life sucks enough without having to give Jeff Bezos money, but we also do have a paperback copy available for sale over there too, since we also need to eat.

https://nightbeatseu.ca/the-sad-bastard-cookbook/

Things I do while conversing with my ND friends

Staring at trees or other background objects while explaining stuff

Special interest rants!!!

Stopping to smell candles/flowers/tea/etc.

Brief moments of eye contact (that are somehow less uncomfortably intimate than eye contact with NTs) before looking at other things again

Stretches/hand flapping/other stims

Speaking really quickly because I'm excited about something

Speaking with lots of pauses because I'm having trouble finding the right words

Making the decision to be interested in whatever topics they bring up

Not worrying about boring them because I know that they'll make themselves interested in my topics, too

"What's the history of that word/grammar form?" *everything on pause while we research and discuss*

"Another thing about *topic discussed an hour ago*"

Night falls but we forget that we're sitting in the dark because facial expressions aren't necessary to the conversation

Relating what they say back to myself but not worrying about seeming self-centered because they understand that's how I empathize

Talking for 10 hours straight but not being tired because we don't have to mask

Learning new facts every time I talk to them

Arabesques

You know those edits that are like "(fandom) + Greek words for love" usually being Eros, Ludus, Storge, Mania, Pragma, Philia and Agape?

Why oh why has no one done an edit that is like "Sons of Feanor + completely fucked up ideas about love"? I feel like this could be done

i know there are the 5 love languages but what about hate languages

This is legitimately good advice and works for almost everyone, but I do want to add that when an author believes that reworking a piece is worth it, we end up with such treasures as The Code by @adurowrites

As someone who reads favorite fanfics over and over again, it's always a treat when an author posts a new and improved version, especially when they give the reader insight into their rewriting and editing process

You don't owe it to anyone to redo your old work simply because it isn't as skillfully written as your newer stuff, but if you yourself want to engage in the endeavor and you think that it'll be good for you, go for it! And let me know afterwards because I want to read it

I know you said at one point that towards the sun was a multi year project (or at least I’m p sure u did? ig if I’m wrong just ignore this ask fjigjgjg), and I wondered something. What if by the time you get to the end, you’ve improved your writing so much that you’re not satisfied with the beginning anymore?

That is actually a normal part of writing! If you can see places to improve your old work, then you have improved since you wrote it. So like. It's a good thing when that happens.

Little edits like typos, or things like the Towards the Sun edit to remove icky blind stereotypes, are almost always worth fixing. The former is quick and easy (and bugs me on a visceral level), the latter is basic decency.

Big edits, like large plot or character arc changes, are almost never worth doing. Especially in fanfiction, where most readers aren't going to see those edits because they read the chapter months ago and ain't coming back.

AKA: I'll be leaving older stuff alone. Everyone can see the post date, if it's not as good as my newer stuff there's a pretty self-explanatory reason.

theory: Aredhel was the most skilled among the Noldor at spells of concealment

support:

she was particularly friends with Celegorm, so it's reasonable to conclude that she, too, was a hunter. stealth is a valuable skill for a hunter.

why did a woman who grew so impatient with Gondolin that she badgered her brother for years into letting her leave, and then slipped away from the escort he insisted upon, even move to such a secret city in the first place? Because she's the one who helped hide it in the first place

seriously, someone in the building of Gondolin must've been an expert at concealment spells. Even with Ulmo's blessing, you simply can't build and move en masse to an entire city without anyone finding out where it is without serious juju. why not Aredhel?

Turgon let his sister leave Gondolin on vacation when he never let anyone else go not out of weakness to the pleas of family, but because he knew that if Aredhel didn't want Morgoth or his spies to see or track her, they fucking wouldn't see or track her - and if they could, Gondolin's hope of secrecy was lost anyway.

alas that Eol was even better at it than she was (maybe this intrigued her at first. maybe there was delighted hide-and-seek beneath the dark trees before there was only hiding)

alas that she didn't have time to teach Maeglin all she knew

female characters not conforming to gender roles is great, but if they have to sneer at women who do fit into those roles in order to do it, it’s just misogynist.

i notice this in fantasy media and it’s fandoms quite a bit that what a ‘strong woman character’ means is often a woman who rejects things historically associated (in western culture) with women. she doesn’t like clothes or pretty things, she doesn’t want to fall in love, she doesn’t care for how she looks, she doesn’t like or want children, she rejects the domestic sphere entirely, etc.

and, of course, any woman should be allowed to do that, those are all valid things and she shouldn’t be constrained to any role, - but when we write these characters such that what makes them strong and valuable is that the people around them (and they themselves) consider them unlike the other women - all we do is reinforce that what those other women are is weak and without value.

so, of course, let’s write our swashbuckling, cursing, warrior women at home among soldiers ... but let us also write housewives and mothers and ladies in bejeweled gowns whom we respect as characters.

empowering a single kind of woman while putting down all the rest is of use to no one!

Fic idea:

There is a hall of waiting for men in Mandos too, right? For them to wait for their loved ones before they go on together? (If I made that up it’s just the fic premise now, but isn’t this where Beren was chilling when Luthien came for him?)

Anyways Elros figures out while he’s waiting for his kids that he can use his Descendant of Luthien powers to pop over to the Elvish side and meet all the dead elvish relatives he wouldn’t get a chance to know until the breaking of the world otherwise.

He realizes most of them are either gonna be there forever cause they demonstrably Can’t Get Over Their Shit, or Valinor will end up a burning pile of rubble as they are released and forced to face their shit whilst alive.

This is a problem because Elros knows his brother craves family, and while they both accept he and his twin cannot be together forever in life or death, he expects these layabout relatives to get off their dead asses and start making up with each other, so when his brother ends up in Valinor, whenever that may be, he has a loving supportive family that isn’t dragging him in a hundred different directions.

Cue dead Elros playing life (death?) coach to a bunch of dead elves. Some of them are conscious enough it’s like having a normal conversation. Some of them are in soothing or disturbing dreamscapes, with various degrees of awareness of where they are, what they’ve done, and what has happened since they died.

Helpful sidekicks include:

- Soon to be released Glorfindel!

- Finwe, cause he’s sick of his family being idiots and sad his BFF Elwe isn’t talking to him.

- Elros’s extremely argumentative wife, who’s a little confused, but she got the spirit.

- Namo very deliberately Not Helping, because they are Breaking Rules, but who keeps giving them hints like “It would be a shame if you dragged this person’s soul by it’s metaphorical ear to talk to that person’s soul, which of course is interfering which is Bad, I hear.”

- A maia representative sent by Nienna (who thinks this is brilliant). It’s a Maia who really loves elves, and is really interested in how to get them to stop self sabotaging with their own stupidity, and yeah. It’s Gandalf.

Pervading questions:

What happened to Dior and the first set of Peredhel twins?

Where are the Feanorians? Did they really get sent to the void?

Why would anyone want to live forever dealing with this nonsense, is Elrond a martyr or just an idiot. It’s just Finwean family drama? forever?!?!Elros is very confident he made the right choice.

I’ll definitely write this outside my head >>

8 year old Dick’s third trip to Bruce’s office and being so helpful that he pressed ALL the elevator buttons so that they could shout good morning to each floor